All You Have to Do Is Look

The blogs and newspapers are filled with hope nowadays. The awful treatment of the immigrants, the Epstein files, the terrible attacks on other countries--all of it--suggests that enough of the country won't possibly put up with this nonsense for the Republicans to survive keeping their majorities in Congress in the upcoming elections next November.

But all you have to do is look at one thing, one other thing that suggests that people will overlook all the other nonsense and rationalize voting for the Republicans again.

You see it nearly every day, too: The price of gas. All you have to do is look.

The price in the Milwaukee area has dropped to $2.37 a gallon, by no means the lowest in the nation. This is the lowest it's been for months. You can rationalize about the prices of other consumer goods rising, and well they may be. You can grouse about the job numbers slowing down, and well they may also be. But those are hidden in newspaper reports, explained in more than one sentence, filled with economic gobblygook. Won't matter.

As long as that number stays low, stays even beneath $3 a gallon, the Republicans are not in trouble. That's the number they will point to, the number that the Democrats are helpless to change if they even wanted to.

Plenty of articles have run for years now that says that the president has nothing to do with the price of gasoline, one way or another. But 47 will brag about it, lie about it, during the next campaign. They'll take the credit as evidence that their policies are working for America.

Remember, too: Many of his supporters will rationalize anything so it doesn't get in the way of doubting their support for him. Cults work like that. So if they have something noticeable, something right out in the open, which indicates anything positive, they'll rush right at it.

I'm not saying it can't be overcome. I'm saying that if Democrats think that the latest disasters will work decisively against the Republicans later next year and they don't need to work very hard, they will get hung on yet another tree of naïveté.

People keep forgetting, or at least ignoring it: Elections are close. The country is split so closely you can't get a toothpick in there. Democrats just won't believe it. They refuse. And yes, it's difficult to accept that those 'over there' who believe the other side's propaganda and lies continue to do so. But they do. They accept the packaging that 47 and his minions concoct.

What that means, sadly, is that the betraying facts alone won't do. It's the packaging that will turn people  away from the nonsense and towards the light. And Democrats have traditionally been bad at that.

Republicans have been working on it, been donating money to it, been honing it to a fine edge for about 60 years now. They failed miserably in 1964, when Barry Goldwater ran for president against Lyndon Johnson, the incumbent. The Democrats had a built-in advantage with the hangover of the Kennedy Assassination, so they won in a walk. But the Republicans knew they were on to something, so they continued with the research, the largesse, and the results.

The late George Lakoff, a linguist from U-Cal Berkeley, wrote about this about 20 or 25 years ago, and not nearly enough people were listening. He noted the think-tanks that Republicans were forming and how they were twisting our language to fit their needs. His predictions have become all too clear. The Republicans have become too good at packaging their phraseology.

Project 2025, for instance, has done horrible damage to our governmental system, with doubtless more to come. But that has been buttressed with major social research money over the last six decades. No question that they've thrown some of that money away. But behind it came much more.

Example: The Democrats have tried to capsulate their new appeals under the heading of "affordability." But gas prices are diving too fast for them to keep up: That is the most obvious indication of dropping prices, even though they have nothing to do with what's going on inside grocery stores. They will lose on that word. Unless gas prices will spike somewhere down the road, they will have to come up with something else. Gas prices will counteract "affordability."

Besides, "affordability" is an awkward, made-up phrase that's clumsy to use. Republicans are masters at drawing people's attention away from issues that make them uncomfortable, pay for advance polling, and coming up with something that sticks better in people's heads.

How much does this matter? Think about the 2024 election campaign ads. You knew the Republicans would use their massive moneys to scare you about trans-people eating up sports awards in high schools. That ridiculous notion was a contrived chimera. But it had its effects on minority males. They broke for 47. In a close election, that made the decisive difference. We are living in a deepening dystopia because of it.

So ignore what the pundits are saying now. Wait until later. If gas prices remain low, we'll all feel better about that, the Republicans will try to attach it to the imperial presidency, and things will tighten up again. If prices go up significantly, say over $3 a gallon again, enough of those who remain on the margins will more likely dash to the other side. 

Only prices on groceries can fog over gas prices. Yes, that may make more of a difference. But 47 will keep making promises, keep blaming Biden, and keep the count close. And there is the matter of seizure of ballot boxes, too, if it's obvious that Republicans will get clobbered, drawing on some bogus legal remedy.

Irrational? But how is 47 in there again at all if not irrationally?

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark